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Double Standard for Reid?

When Tank got arrested for guns the judge told him that a player is responsible for everything in his home.

When a player gets caught with drugs in his home he gets suspended.

When a assistant coach for Dallas gets caught with HGH he gets a 4 game suspension cause it was in his home.

When Andy Reid's sons get arrested and his house gets searched and the judge says the Reid house was a "drug emporium" nothing happens to the coach. Is this a double standard? Should Reid get in some sort of trouble by the league? Everyone else got in troubel for things at their houses, why didn't Andy Reid?

Double-standard train arrives at Reid's station
It's not often that broadcaster Al Michaels, as skilled as they come, triggers my gag reflex. But he did during the Philadelphia-Dallas broadcast on Sunday.
There are few people who don't feel for Eagles coach Andy Reid on some level. He is the parent of two delinquent and dangerous sons, one of which is an alleged drug dealer. You remember what drug dealers do, right? They destroy neighborhoods, families and the very fabric of society

Michaels expressed such syrupy sympathy for Reid it was unclear if Michaels was talking about Reid or Martin Luther King. He spoke of how unfortunate it is that Reid is in the public eye and if it were the children of a Fortune 500 CEO getting into trouble with the law, it would not be headlines.
Ah, Mr. Michaels. Can I call you Mr. Michaels? Reid decided to get -- and stay -- in a profession that requires 20-hour days and he enjoys the multimillion dollar salary that accompanies it. Reid didn't join the Peace Corps.
While there is sympathy for Reid and his family, you cannot be anything but floored by the double standard the Reid case demonstrates.
Imagine if quarterback Donovan McNabb had two kids who were such dangers to society. They were driving while high on heroin. They were drug dealers. McNabb's home was described as a "drug emporium" by an unbiased judge who also stated there was no structure in the home. What would the reaction be?
There would be great outrage. There would be a national debate on whether McNabb should leave the game and take care of his family. The league can deny this but they would have agents (read: spies) monitoring every move McNabb and his family made. They would want to drug test him. The commissioner would say, as he has before, that what happens in a player's home is his responsibility.
Most of all, there would be very little sympathy for McNabb.
Indeed, the double-standard train is on quite a tremendous roll this month. Imagine if an NBA or NFL player the caliber of Martina Hingis -- one of the great, historic players in tennis history -- allegedly tested positive for cocaine use and then retired while claiming her innocence. Retiring while in the prime of their career, by the way. Testing positive after Wimbledon, the tennis Mecca, the tennis equivalent of the Super Bowl, by the way. What would happen?
It is true that tennis is a sport largely ignored by Americans, but her case was so stunning it should have merited far more attention than it received. If Allen Iverson had tested positive for cocaine after a playoff game, there would be congressional investigations and ESPN half-hour specials dedicated to the NBA drug culture.
You would chuckle and launch into mock mode if an NBA player suggested, as the Hingis camp is, that a spiked drink might have caused a failed drug test.
I have always felt that there are as many coke heads, juicers and punks in the lesser sports as there are in the major ones –- the "sport" of Mixed Martial Arts comes to mind -- it's just that we don't care as much. There is also the fact that many media members who cover those sports don't look for dirt in them the way the media does in sports like football and basketball.
In other words, there tend to be more advocates covering the lesser sports and journalists covering the big ones.

Oh, and the double-standard train rolls on. Just imagine if Tyrone Willingham was the coach of Notre Dame and the Irish lost to freaking Navy for the first time in four decades? Then acted like a petulant, obnoxious child to the media as Charlie Weis has done ever since he came to the Irish?

Willingham would have never been able to act as boorishly as Weis has while losing as miserably.
If it had been Willingham falling to Navy, he or his property might have been physically harmed. I'm not kidding.
Reid's situation is the greatest example maybe in many, many decades of how perception works in our society and how people are treated differently.
Reid is a good person, but again would there be the level of understanding given to a player, if one of his sons was high on heroin and operating a motor vehicle and the other son in a separate incident pointed a handgun at a motorist?
There would be numerous questions about that player's worthiness as a parent and demands for him to leave football. Not just by the local media but by many in the media across the country.
As a society, we normally have little sympathy for the parents of drug dealers. We often blame them for the behavior of their kids. Parent and child are usually linked together. Reid is escaping that kind of judgment.
Not only is he escaping judgment, he is receiving the kind of pass from many fans and the media -- and equally important the NFL -- that no player would ever get.
The NFL is trying to deny there is a double standard at work but it's just not believable. I know this league. If a member of a player's family was running a "drug emporium," the antennae of this new, hard-*** commissioner would be raised.
Yes, the double-standard train rolls on.
Not exactly shocking that it is, however.

So we all want to have a suspension handed down to Ried, because his sons had drugs? Really? Because his two grown-up sons made poor decisions, we should punish their father? At his job?

O.k. if a player has drugs in his home, yada-yada-yada... But how many players have grown men living with them? Where were these drugs found? Were they in Andy Reids bedroom? The kitchen? Or were they in the private rooms of another pair of grown men?

Maybe you are right. It sure sounds like (Major sarcams on the way.) he did some very evil deed.

I especially like the way the article states that drug dealers ruin neighborhoods, and so on. LMFAO!!!! I always thought that they sold drugs.

With that kind of thinking... I drive a car. Cars kill millions of Americans every day. I am the biggest killer in America!!!! And I never even knew it!!!! OH, LORD!!!! PLEASE FORGIVE ME!!!!!

Accuse people of what they do. Not what other people do, in reaction to it.